News from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University

Stephen Ramsey levels up in NIH program

In August, Stephen Ramsey, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, along with his collaborators, received an additional $351,443 in funding to develop a biomedical data translator, bringing the total funds this year to $788,443.

The award is part of a program by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build a tool that brings together medical data from various sources to better understand health and disease and, ultimately, to diagnose and treat patients more quickly.

Ten teams across the country are working on the biomedical data translator, in what started out as a competition, but is now a collaborative effort.

The unusual program required the teams to first solve a series of puzzles before they could view the RFA (request for application). The funding is not a grant, but instead called an “other transaction” award. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), the branch of NIH that is running the program, continually assesses the progress of the teams and doles out funding for short periods of time based on the progress of the teams.

“It’s a very flexible model which enables us to be nimble,” Ramsey said. “They can make adjustments to the deliverables to focus resources on things that are working, and not dedicate resources to approaches that aren’t working.”